Starting with macOS 12.2 (I believe), I have encountered problems when applications try to open dialogs, especially file dialogs. My hunch is that the problem is some kind of resource leak in the window manager. The system will run fine for a while (a day or two), then suddenly get very slow or applications will hang trying to open a dialog. The most interesting failure occurs when I try to use a Save dialog from Firefox. A file dialog is displayed that is almost completely invisible. The only visible component is the file format menu button. Usually I can dismiss the dialog with ESC, but sometimes that does not work. I have found that quitting an application sometimes fixes the problem temporarily, but generally a restart is needed.
Given the seriousness of the problems, I wonder why I am not hearing about other people having this problem and why the problem has not been fixed. One possibility is that I am using an application that is not widely used and it is triggering the problem be not releasing resources. (I won't name the application now without having more evidence.) As an experiment, I have stopped using that application to see if the problems go away. Even if that is the explanation, I think the window manager should do better at preventing one application from causing problems with other applications.
FB9937157 submitted two months ago
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Add a CommentThe result of not using the suspect application is that the problem did not go away, although it took longer for the problem to occur (about 5 days instead of the usual 1 or 2 days). So, the application is not the cause of the problem, but it may perform more of the operations that trigger the problem.
I have started tracking the memory usage of the WindowServer process. In a freshly restarted system with no desktop applications other than Activity Monitor, the memory usage (as reported by Activity Monitor) is about 130 MB. Right now it is 775 MB, which is getting close to the territory where things start to hang. As applications are started and exited, the memory usage goes up and down. However, I have observed (using a script that logs the memory usage every minute) that when the system exits display sleep there can be an "instantaneous" jump in the memory usage of 100 MB or more. This additional memory usage is never reverted. By the way, I am using an Intel based iMac.